Democracy, governance and citizenship

Gender Indicators, Australia presents a summary of gender-specific data in six areas of social concern for gender equality: Economic Security, Education, Health, Work and Family Balance, Safety and Justice, and Democracy, Governance and Citizenship.

Non-public sector
While the proportion of women CEO’s decreased slightly between 2013-14 (15.7%) and 2014-15 (15.4%), the proportion of women who were key management personnel increased from 26.1% to 27.4%. Women chairs of governing bodies/boards also increased in this time, from 12% to 14.2% (see Table 6.2).

Parliamentarians
In January 2016, women made up 30.5% of federal parliamentarians, exactly the same as January 2015. While this rate has been relatively stable for a number of years, it has risen by 5.5 percentage points since 2001. There continued to be higher proportions of women in the Senate (38.2%) than in the House of Representatives (26.7%).

In January 2016, 33% of state/territory parliamentarians were women (up by almost 11 percentage points since 2001).

Public Sector
In line with the long term trend since 2001, the proportion of women senior executive managers in the Australian Public Service grew from 40.5% in 2014 to 41% in 2015, despite the ongoing decrease in total numbers since 2012. Just under 48% of executive level staff were women.